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Our round-up of British and Irish book salescoming up from August 21-31, 2018.

Works by the Pre-Raphaelites and their followers continued to outperform the rest of the Victorian art market during the latest round of sales in London. Topping the auctions at both Sotheby’s and Christie’s were two ‘jeune fille fatale’ creations by Pre-Raphaelite latecomer, John William Waterhouse (1849-1917).

In 1942, the annual ‘Shakespeare Lecture’ at the British Academy was delivered by CS Lewis and called 'Hamlet: the Prince or the Poem?'

The pair to the famous ‘Bain bridge vase’ – knocked down at £43m in 2010 but later sold for half that sum – has come to market. Sotheby’s will sell the near identical vase, that has a century-long provenance, in Hong Kong in the autumn

The most desirable of all sealed bottles are those that are both named and dated. It is the possibility for geneaological research that fires many collectors.

Craig was in the trade for nearly 30 years. He was an expert on jewellery and had a passion for natural history and all manner of curiosities. Dealers and auctioneers would often ask for advice when faced with a mystery object and he had an uncanny ability to come up with the answer.

A valuation day find for Kingham & Orme (20% buyer’s premium), this Dutch-engraved East India Company baluster goblet c.1760, took a multi-estimate £7500 in Evesham.

This small scene by Scottish genre painter Thomas Faed (1826-1900) shown below sold for a quadruple-estimate £8500 at Brightwells (22% buyer’s premium).

Downtown Los Angeles has a new mid-market fine art auction house, formed by a group of ex-Bonhams specialists.

London dealer showcases powerful works of an artist fascinated by the human condition

MADAM – Peter Cameron writes in ATG No 2353 that only 691 people have signed the ivory petition [now at 1688 as we go to press], that a response from the government requires 10,000 signatures, and that 100,000 are needed to raise a parliamentary debate.

In his later years, Welsh painter Wilf Roberts spent time going on drives, his wife Sue at the wheel, out to the Anglesey countryside. He would set off with pencils or watercolours to sketch landscapes while she waited for him in the car, reading.